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My cal­en­dar is in Sep­tem­ber, although my brain may be in Octo­ber. September’s lit­tle moti­va­tional say­ing is, “Let Today be the Start of Some­thing New.” Yes, with that kind of capitalization–at least it looks that way to me.

WHAT’S NEW?

Mostly, nothing’s new, in that I’m writ­ing, and rid­ing, and writ­ing. In between every­thing else, like library trustee duties and yearly doc­tor vis­its, and a bit of trav­el­ing. Still, I’m try­ing to approach every­thing with new zeal and inspiration.

I’ll let you know how that works out for me.

I’m still work­ing like a demon to get the 5th Peri book drafted. It’s being a dif­fi­cult child, tak­ing me on more twists and turns than I gen­er­ally enjoy when I get to the third act. I’m hop­ing this means it’s worth it.

As usual, I will be teach­ing at the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Writ­ers Con­fer­ence in Irvine over the week­end of Sep­tem­ber 21–23. One work­shop is on the nuts and bolts of self-publishing (which sounds like you’re doing it all your­self, but trust me, you’re not). The other is my work­shop on humor, which I haven’t done in a few years. Should be fun. Or funny. Your pick.

Here is the website–if you are a writer and you live in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia (or close enough, or even Australia–yes, I’m look­ing at you, Janelle), you should check it out. You get a remark­able amount of knowl­edge, net­work­ing, and nat­ter­ing (stretch­ing here for another “N”) for what turns out to be an afford­able amount. If you want to be a pub­lished writer, you need to think in terms of invest­ing in your goal–it’s more than just putting words to paper.

It’s about writ­ers, for writ­ers, adver­tis­ing the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Writ­ers Con­fer­ence. We have three con­fer­ences, San Diego in Feb­ru­ary, Irvine in Sep­tem­ber, and a new, inten­sive mini-conference in Sun­River, Ore­gon (I’ve been to this place–it’s fab­u­lous). Let this moti­vate you to check out the conference–I’ll be there, teach­ing a work­shop or two!

WHATELSEISHAPPENING?

Works-in-Progress My newest man­u­script, aka The Girl Pirate Fan­tasy, aka BLOODDRAGONRIS­ING (offi­cial work­ing title), didn’t get a bite from any agent, but they did give me some sparkling feed­back, which I am tak­ing to heart. It means mas­sive edits, but I know the work will be stronger. Because that’s what writ­ers do–we toughen our ten­der but-my-baby hearts, lis­ten to cri­tique, and step up to becom­ing bet­ter writers.

In the mean­time, I’ve also started the fifth Peri Min­neopa mys­tery. It’s in its infancy, so patience, please.

What’s BLOODDRAGONRIS­ING about?

Lisette de Lille dreams of drag­ons. This is not nor­mal for a young noble­woman. Nei­ther are her dreams for high adven­ture and true love. Yet some dreams come true, even if they mean being a vic­tim to a polit­i­cal coup, sold to pirates, sub­jected to a blood curse, guided by god­desses, embroiled in a fight to the death with a lover, or turn­ing into a deadly dragon at night. Blood Dragon Ris­ing is the first install­ment of The Blood Dragon fan­tasy series.